Ada would answer:
“Oh, fairies are invisible, and no doubt the carriage is right near by, but you can’t see it.”
“But what’s the use,” I would say, “of a carriage I can’t see?”
“Try it again,” would say Ada. “Perhaps they’ll relent. You probably offended them, or didn’t do it just right.”
For seven nights more, I would faithfully repeat the formula. Then at Ada’s suggestion I would hunt in the tall grass at the end of the garden.
“Perhaps,” Ada would say, “there is a fairy sitting on the edge of a blade of grass and she has the carriage.”
Then I would lie in the grass and wait for the carriage to become visible. I never got that doll’s carriage. The fairies never relented.
I dozed for a little while and was awakened by the faint crowing of cocks, and I thought sleepily of a little pet chicken I used to dress in baby’s clothes, and I dreamed of a lovely wax doll that Mrs. McAlpin had given me.
It was queer how, as I lay there, all these little details of my childhood came up to my mind. I saw that wax doll as plainly as if I had it in my arms again. My brother Charles had taken a slate pencil and had made two cruel marks on its sweet face, and had left the house laughing at my rage and grief. All day long I had nursed my doll, rocking it back and forth in my arms and sobbing:
“Oh, my doll! Oh, my doll!”